Excerpt from The King of Rivers: With a Chart of Our Slave and Free Soil Territory In ascending the Mississippi, it is well to pause and Observe, in its very citadel. The workings of slavery. It is the fashion to say, that the mere presence of slavery stagnates the flow of industry, and impedes ruinously the prosperous advance Of any country and there is a certain amount of truth in this - as there is in all popular errors; for they must have a little breath of vitality to live - but it is a partial and distorted truth. It is true, that educated and self-governing industrial classes are the ablest supporters of the state, but all producers have their value. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.